tender matter such as life
by Meocaroba
Summary: Aoi Hyuuga has what she always wanted: A relationship, an apartment, a good job. Yet somehow, memories of her past can't seem to let her go. Running into Rei Serio in front of a grocery store only makes matters worse. / Set after Ch. 180, written for day 2 of ga-party's May prompts: childhood trauma.


**tender matters such as life**

* * *

 _AN: This was first written for ga-party's May challenge over on tumblr. We never get to see what Aoi ends up doing with her life (though there are a few hints in the spin-off) so I thought I'd write a lil' fic about her based on my personal headcanons. Hope you guys enjoy :)_

* * *

 _She doesn't remember much, but she knows he is her protector. He promised her that and why shouldn't she believe his words? He was there when she woke, he is there still. He shows her how to use her hands to grasp her surroundings: The wooden floor that leaves tiny splinters in her skin and the metal bars that keep her inside, no, safe. The small bathroom and the shower, her table and her bed. The air is cool, always cool. No fire reaches her skin, no ash tickles her nose. Everything beyond the room and her protector is blurry. Sometimes she reaches for it but always, always there is a wall. But the wall is good, he says. There is no joy beyond the wall. The outside world, he tells her, will not treat her kindly. Sometimes, solitude is protection. She can hear he speaks the truth, the kind of aching, painful truth one cannot learn, only experience. She believes him. He is her protector, after all, and no fire will burn her, no darkness terrify her, as long as he is by her side._

* * *

Aoi Hyuuga spots Persona while she's out buying milk and cornflakes. The night before was rough, as most nights are, lately. She spent a good three hours fighting with Paige about...honestly, she hardly remembers what they were fighting about. Life is strangely cyclical these days. Hours blur together until they become weeks and one argument over their future bleeds into the next. Maybe that's why she goes out to buy cornflakes - her girlfriend likes them and watching her wolf down three bowls will restore peace to their tumultuous relationship, until the next day at least.

It's October and the air outside is freezing already, as though winter is stretching out its fingers to have just a little bit more time to wreak havoc. Aoi shivers and burrows her face into her jacket. She's crossing the street when she sees him. His hair is dark but shorter than she remembers and he's putting groceries into a car. She's heard about the whole thing, of course. It's not like it hasn't been years since the Elementary School Principal of the Alice Academy in Japan fell and Rei Serio left the school to pursue a better life. But in all those years he never sought her out. Her brother told her Serio got married, had a baby. Back then, her stomach twisted at the thought.

He sees her, she knows he does, even as she tries to hurry into the store. "Miss Hyuuga," he says.

His voice makes her breath quicken. It's the same voice, slightly rough around the edges, the same voice she remembers hearing throughout the years she spent living in darkness. Right now, however, shock tints his words and she doesn't remember that, doesn't remember him sounding anything less than perfectly in control. She bites down on her lips, anticipating his next words.

"Please, can I...can we talk?"

Aoi pauses in her steps and answers without turning to face him. "I'd rather not," she says hurriedly, her tongue stumbling over the words. "If you'll excuse me, I'm busy."

Three more steps and the doors of the store open. She passes shelves, employees, customers before stopping in between two racks of fruit. Her heart is pounding hard enough to escape from her chest and she can't quite seem to catch her breath. Aoi lets fear push her down and falls to her knees, the granite floor cool under her legs. He's just a person, she thinks. Just one person.

She thinks about calling her brother, too, but her fingers won't listen to her so she leans her head back to look at the ceiling. Above her, fluorescent light bulbs gleam and she stares at them until small dots start dancing in front of her eyes, lets their brightness chase away any lingering memories. Breathing, her therapist taught her, is the most important thing. She breathes for a while, even as her body tells her that she is dying dying dying dead. The panic fades eventually. It doesn't leave but then it never does. Aoi thinks that maybe it's just a part of her now - like her bones and her blood and her skin, something life has knitted into her body. She can sense it rising and falling as she goes to buy the cornflakes she came for, incessant tiny waves forever crashing against her mind.

* * *

 _Her brother never quite understands why she chooses architecture as her career. "You would make a great teacher," he tells her once. "Or a doctor. Something like that." But architecture offers her the opportunity to make things that will outlive her - buildings that will house humans for decades. After a childhood of leaving buildings behind and burning them down, it feels like absolution to construct them now. Whatever she tore down, whatever was taken because of the fire in her veins, she will rebuild. And the homes that rise up now from the ashes of her own mistakes will be five, no ten times stronger than what came before them. Robustness, that's what it is about. Nothing fanciful, nothing wasteful, something that will last. "Doesn't sound like fun," her brother says. He looks at her with serious red eyes so she forces a smile. "It's what I want to do," she tells him. "It's who I want to be."_

* * *

Paige is waiting for her when she unlocks the door to their shared apartment. "Where have you been?," she demands. There's an edge to her voice. Aoi stretches out her arm to present the bag she's carrying. "I got you some cornflakes," she says, keeping her voice light, her lips curved into a smile. "We didn't have any left so I thought-"

"You should have told me you were going somewhere," Paige interrupts. "I called you a dozen times, can't you at least pick up the phone?"

Aoi slips out of her shoes and hangs up her jacket. "I didn't hear the ringing," she answers truthfully. "You know I always keep it on mute."

Paige's face twists into a grimace of anger. Inwardly, Aoi sighs. "Look," she says, trying to sound as calm as she can. "I'm sorry. Let's not fight, alright?"

"Suit yourself," Paige hisses. She shakes her head, her reddish curls bouncing up and down as she does, and grabs the bag Aoi's still holding before stomping off without a word. Aoi can hear her rummaging around in the kitchen and closes her eyes. Breathe, she thinks. Just breathe.

There were days, many months ago, that being with her girlfriend felt less like a chore and more like a blessing. She'd been single for as much as a year at that point, watching from the sidelines as her brother got engaged to his long-time girlfriend. Her own previous relationship had imploded - she'd loved Ahn, but her ex had been so independent that it was difficult to hold onto her in a romantic way. Paige was the complete opposite: Ready to move in with Aoi, ready to settle down. Stability. Until she switched jobs and started coming home tired and irritated, filled with stories about an industry Aoi knows nothing about.

Maybe this is normal, she tells herself as she walks up the stairs to her laptop. The endless repetition, the dullness, the fighting. As much as the arguing exhausts her, at least she knows Paige won't leave. Aoi can't exactly say the same about anyone else in her life. Natsume may always manage to come back, but that doesn't change the fact that he disappears all the time, dropping of the face of the earth to save the world with his friends. He has their mother's blood, her spirit, Aoi thinks.

She isn't made for saving the world. She just wants to have her relationship, her home, her job. She's an architect, mostly responsible for making structural plans for factories and it's good, honest work. Every time she presents her clients with a plan, their smile makes the geometry and endless planning worth it. Well, almost. Lately not even her job has made her smile. Factories are...robust, redstone and metal, but they're not places people live in. Still, they're what her firm specializes in and being self-employed is too high a risk to take.

But when she checks her laptop after getting upstairs, she doesn't immediately delete a mail her brother forwarded her, about some rich guy looking for a freelance designer to draw up plans for his new home. The guy seems to want a lot, perhaps more than any architect can give him. He is well-known, so any architect who does give him what he wants can expect much needed exposure. Aoi leans back in her chair. Above her head, the first building plans she ever made are pinned to the ceiling. They are...ambitious, a colossus of sturdy metal and glass. They got her into her desired architecture program, they got her this far. She looks back down to read the email again. "Free-standing, ambitious, cutting edge" it says.

"Sounds like anyone but me," she mutters to herself and pushes her chair back to get up. But as she walks downstairs, the words echo in her mind and her fingers itch for a pen. Maybe, her mind whispers, maybe, maybe. It won't quiet down, not even as she sits down next to her girlfriend, not even after the two of them watch a sitcom in awkward silence. Maybe, maybe, this is something she can do.

* * *

 _Her father is the one who convinces her to see a therapist. He says her weight loss worries him, almost as much as the way she never quite laughs with her eyes anymore. He doesn't make her tell him what's wrong, but he does tell her about her mother, how she was beautiful and strong but sometimes felt so sad and lost that she didn't care about life or love or her future. The therapist talks to her about the fear monster, which is what she has started to call the lingering memories from her time at the Academy, talks to her about her dreams for her life and her job. It doesn't fix everything but it helps, the same way turning on the light helps one find scattered items on the floor. At the same time, it makes Aoi's skin crawl. Why does she need help? Has the school damaged her so badly, has it made her weak? Or, even worse: Was she weak from the start?_

* * *

"How do you feel about today's fight,?" her therapist asks her. Aoi shrugs. She's sitting on the leather couch in her therapist's office. The sun is shining through the trees outside, throwing leaf-like shadows onto the wall. It's a peaceful day, far too peaceful to discuss the intricacies of her relationship.

"It was the same as all the other fights," she says. "I'm sure we'll figure it out." Her attempt at a hopeful smile clearly falls short, because her therapist raises her brows.

"That may be true, but do you want to figure it out?"

Aoi frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Are you happy, Aoi?"

"Sure I am," Aoi says, the answer more a reflex than the truth. "I love my girlfriend, this is just a rough patch."

Her therapist nods. "I see. It just seems as though every day, she does something that upsets you. Sometimes people just aren't compatible. It's not weakness to walk away from someone who isn't right for you."

"What we have between us is good," Aoi insists. She fiddles with her thumb. "Once we've put this behind us, we might even get married. Why not, we already have an apartment. You know, my brother was engaged when he was my age."

"Why is it you want to get married? Why do you want a life with her?"

"Well, I love her. Obviously."

Her therapist's questions are starting to make her uncomfortable and Aoi glances at the clock. There's still ten more minutes before the session is over.

"Look, does it really matter why I want to get married?," she says impatiently. "It's the normal thing to do."

Normal. She stares at her therapist, who is now wearing a quiet, almost expectant smile. Normal. Is that a reason to want to be with someone? Aoi doesn't know, but it's certainly better than the void she slipped into during some of the months she spent being single. The darkness then was almost as bad as the darkness in the Academy's cage, only it whispered even crueller things into her ears and took away all her motivation. She couldn't even make herself get out of bed in the morning, let alone do her job. Compared to that, compared to the things she has experienced, her daily fights are a walk in the park and marriage, God, marriage seems like heaven.

"Do you think you deserve no better than that?," her therapist asks. "No better than a relationship with someone you don't really get along with? Do you think you won't find anything in the world that makes you happier?"

Happiness, a loaded word. Aoi was happy once, the innocent kind of happy only children can really feel. And she still is happy now, in some ways at least. She is happy when she sees her brother and his fiancee, her childhood friend Luca, she is happy when she sees the lives they have built. She is happy when she finishes a project.

"I am happy," Aoi says out loud. The words feel hollow in her mouth.

When she climbs into her car after her session, Aoi feels strangely lonely, so she does what she usually does when that particular emotion creeps up on her. She dials her brother's number, puts him on speaker and starts her drive home. He picks up after the first ring.

"What's up?," Natsume asks.

"Oh you know," she says. "Just so bored that even talking to you seems preferable to doing nothing."

Natsume laughs. "Yeah right."

"Hey, have you picked a wedding venue?"

His audible groan makes her smile.

"Please, don't you start, too. Luca and Mikan have decided that planning weddings is their calling or something and they won't stop pestering me about it. I want one second of peace. Just one second! Can't a guy have at least that?"

"Hmm, I don't know, Mr. Groom-to-be," she teases gently. "It is your wedding, after all."

"If it were up to me, we'd get married a week from now in Imai's workshop or something. But that sadistic witch won't let me," he complains. For a while, they're both silent as she weaves her way through the traffic. Eventually, he asks: "Hey, are you ok?"

"I saw Persona today. I mean, Serio. Whatever."

"Did you talk to him?"

"No," she says. "I was...busy."

"Oh," he says. Again, silence stretches between them. Aoi gnaws on her bottom lip. She can practically hear her brother's worried thoughts pile up inside his head. She realizes that although they both know Rei Serio, they know different versions of him. She knows the man who trapped her yet treated her with kindness. He knows the man who kidnapped his sister and hurt him and his friends.

"How can you stand to even look at him?" The words burst out of her unwillingly.

"I don't know," Natsume answers. She overtakes another car and stops at a red light before he answers. "I guess one day I just looked at him and realized that hating him would never make me a better person. Part of me will always feel those feelings but...he saved Mikan. I can't ignore what he did to you but I can't ignore that either. He seems like he's trying to change and he better be because if he ever hurts anyone ever again, I'll kill him." She knows her brother well enough to understand he's serious. "But until then," Natsume continues. "Until he hurts someone, I'll let him be. Let him try to be better, I guess."

Aoi is still pondering his words when she pulls into her driveway.

"Hey….Do you have his number?," she asks before she can stop herself.

"I...Yeah. Mikan gave it to me. Why?"

"Tell him to meet me," Aoi says. "Tomorrow morning, at the Starburst cafe. Tell him not to be late."

"Alright," Natsume says. "I will. Love you, sis."

"I love you, too."

And she does, even more than she already has, loves him so fiercely it makes her smile despite her thudding heartbeat. Perhaps some of her mother's liquid fire courage is finally stirring inside of her, or maybe it's just the craziness her brain can never quite shed, but whatever it is, it's pushing her forward, pushing her to meet the man who shaped her past.

* * *

 _Everything comes back to her after her brother frees her. Colors, feelings a sense of purpose. But he sends her away after a few precious days and she feels lost. Her Alice is still gone and the darkness may have a different form now but it's still there. She makes her father leave the lights on when he tucks her in before sleep, because she is afraid of waking up in the middle of the night and feeling helpless once more. The children at school smile at her and they don't ask questions. She is thankful and smiles back, thinking that maybe this could be a new beginning. Freedom is exhilarating and wonderful and more, much more than she could have imagined. She dreams of her brother and her mother, of seeing them again. Time, she believes in her heart, will bring all of them together one day. For a while the fear vanishes entirely, but then her brother dies and it flares up, blazes like a flame. Freedom is cruel and terrifying and more, much more than she can handle._

* * *

They meet in a small cafe. He's already there and she can see him through one of the windows, sitting at a table for two and staring straight ahead. For just a few seconds, Aoi wants to turn and and leave. It would be the easy thing to do, it would make the panic disappear again, for a few moments at least. The life she has now, the life she has built, has survived without Rei Serio's interference. She doesn't need a resolution to this story, never has. But her reflection in her car window looks back at her through big, deep red eyes and she remembers her mother, beautiful and fierce, the mother she has never known but who maybe, just maybe, is just as alive inside of her as the fear is. Aoi gets out of her car, grabs her keys as tightly as she can and walks forward.

He raises his head when she enters. The shock is back except this time she's familiar with it. When she sits down on the other side of the table, she scoots back with her chair back, widening the space between them. "So," she says. "What did you want to say?"

"I didn't think you'd come," Serio says. He glances at the gap between her and the table and then up to meet her eyes. "I don't think I would have, if I were in your position."

"Well, we're not the same person," Aoi says forcefully. All the words she has swallowed before, all the thoughts her session with her therapist has reawoken spill forth now. The smile she usually wears feels impossible to accomplish and so she lets kindness drain from her features as she presses her shaking fists into her legs. She forgets to breathe, lets the anxiousness wash over her, lets her feelings carry the words out of her mouth. "We were never the same, you and me. I don't care what happened to you, what sadness they put you through. You took my life and you twisted it around and you had no right to do that, none."

Her voice becomes louder with each word and a waiter approaches their table. She waves him off with one impatient gesture before focussing on her companion once more.

To her surprise, Rei Serio nods. "You're right," he says. "I don't expect forgiveness for the things I have done. I just wanted to-"

His words are interrupted when his phone starts ringing. The paleness of his skin makes it easy to spot his embarrassment as his ears go slightly red. He peeks at his phone screen and curses softly under his breath. "Do you mind if I…." He gestures towards his phone. Aoi shrugs.

"Go ahead," she tells him.

With a grateful nod, he picks up. Immediately, as though someone flicked over a switch, the anxiety disappears from his face and a hint of a smile lifts the corners of his mouth.

"Nobara," he says, "Are you ok?"

His wife, Aoi thinks. The girl who somehow fell in love with a guy who hurt children, who threw them in a cage and lied to them. She doesn't understand it, their relationship, doesn't understand how anyone could just forget the blood on Rei Serio's hands. But her former captor seems so non-threatening all of a sudden, so hopelessly smitten. It's a startling transformation that reminds her of the way her brother looks at the people he loves. He, too, is lethal in a fight but there are more sides to him than the death she knows he has rained down upon others. In front of her, Serio laughs and Aoi averts her eyes. He never used to laugh when he visited her in her cage. Back then, his voice was heavy and the smell of death clung to his skin. Everything he had witnessed as a child, the horrible things her brother told her about, had twisted him into a monster.

"Does she make you better?," she asks, after he has finished his call. The question surprises him.

"Yes," he says, quietly at first and then again, adoration tinting every word. "Yes, she does. But...not in the way you think. She tried to change me, yes, but she did more than just that. She loved me enough to believe I could change. Like maybe all the bad things weren't what had to define my life, like I could chose to be more than what happened, even after...even after everything."

"I see," Aoi says. The gap between the table and her chair lets her see her own hands. They're laying on her legs, fingers outstretched, palms relaxed. Somewhere in between entering the cafe and listening to Rei Serio talk, fear released its grip on her heart. "Why did you come?"

"I wanted to tell you….I'm sorry. All those months you had to spent in that cage, they're on me. If I'd been a stronger man, a braver one, I could have gotten you out. But I only ever knew the darkness as a protector. I thought… I thought it might protect you, too. From me and the school and the whole damn fucking mess that was being an Alice back then. But as you said, we're not the same person. Far from it. You were smart enough to take the hand that tried to save you. It took me a lot longer to do the same."

"I don't forgive you," Aoi says. It feels important to make that clear, to make him realize that understanding him doesn't erase the past, just puts it into perspective.

"I don't expect you to," Serio clarifies. "I just wanted...I wanted you to know that you were never to blame for that fire, or the cage, or your blindness. You never walked into that darkness by your own volition, I pushed you in."

"I know," Aoi counters almost automatically. Of course she knows. Right? Of course she has never spent the entire night imagining all the people who got hurt in that town fire or those many many months she never once tried to escape from her cage. Of course she never agonized over her own weakness and wondered how much faster her brother would have gotten away from Persona. Of course she knows. She breathes in and out and looks at him, her heated emotions replaced with pity.

"I never want to see you again," Aoi tells Rei Serio.

He nods mutely. She thinks that this might be what endings feel like.

* * *

 _She feels lost when she isn't in a relationship. Before, her father was always there but now she's living alone and it makes her feel frail. It becomes harder and harder to stay positive, to keep going. Then, one day, she sees a girl with dark hair and dark eyes. They meet, they talk, they fall in love. It's overwhelming and crazy and life-changing but the girl is like a bird, always ready to take flight and Aoi wants nothing more than for her to stay stay stay. The girl doesn't want to stay and suddenly Aoi is alone again. She finishes her degree, she starts working. Possibilities are endless, are a chasm opening up in front of her to swallow her whole. She takes the first job she is offered and immerses herself in it. This is right, she tells herself. This is a great opportunity. This is who she is now, even if it feels nothing like the girl she was before and nothing like the girl she set out to be._

* * *

They part ways soon after that but she doesn't go back to her car right away, instead opting to take a walk in a nearby park before sitting down on a bench. Rei Serio is a different man. It doesn't change the fact that a long time ago, he was a bad one, but it does make her question other things. Perhaps it is possible to shed her skin. Perhaps it is possible to leave the familiar form of her body behind, to slip out of it like one would slip out of a dress and become something, become someone new.

At home, Aoi pulls her first architectural plans from the wall and stares at them. She's been doing this job for years now and so she can spot all her small mistakes, her miscalculations, the moments where she got lazy. Still, something about the building is magical in the way only beginnings can be. It reminds her of her university days, of meeting her first girlfriend and sneaking kisses from her between classes.

"Free-standing, ambitious, cutting edge". She picks up a pencil and turns the plans upside down. Her old drawings are still visible but less defined, not a finished product but the first buds of a new idea. Kneeling in front of her plans, she starts drawing. The metal is replaced with wood but she keeps the glass. Aoi draws a building that is floating, balancing walls of windows on poles of wood. One forest fire and the whole thing would come down, she thinks, and the thought makes her feel giddy not scared. She adds steel to the wooden poles, a hidden core of strength. She wants a building that both blends into its surroundings and enhances them, something that looks time and obscurity in the eye and gives both a defiant middle finger.

Her dark hair falls into her forehead, her fingers become smudged and her back hurts. But the house she is building keeps growing, takes on a life of its own. It isn't a factory, it's not made to be sturdy but it's strong in structure as well as in character. Being blind for a few months has granted her the ability to feel materials as well as see their beauty, and now she can imagine it all, the coolness of the steal and the smoothness of the polished wood, the warmth of the sun shining through the enormous windows. The house is new and good and it has character, spirit, a genuine fire her other houses lacked.

Steps on the staircase make her turn around. Paige is there, her hair still tied back from a long day at work. She looks tired and for the first time Aoi wonders whether perhaps her girlfriend dislikes the fighting just as much as she does, dislikes what they've become and how they've trapped one another in a tight ball of expectations and fear.

"Hey," she says tentatively.

"Hey," Paige says. She stares down at the plans on the ground before sinking to the floor to sit next to Aoi. "You're building something," she says, less question, more statement of a fact.

"Yes," Aoi says. "It's a design for an architecture competition. Do you like it?"

Paige stares at it for a while.

"It's beautiful," she says eventually. "I didn't know you wanted to design houses like that."

"Me neither."

They sit next to each other and Aoi scoots over until she can slip her hand into her girlfriend's. The skin feels strange to her, unfamiliar.

"I think….I think this is over," she says at length.

It's strange that the words come to her now, when they aren't fighting or yelling at each other. It's almost peaceful to sit next to Paige, to feel the warmth of her body. But it isn't romance, not anymore. Maybe the lack of anything between them is something only silence could reveal or maybe Aoi has seen it the whole time but really was too scared to search for something better.

"Yeah," Paige says. She looks down at their clasped hands, squeezes them once and lets go. "I think so, too."

They end up not having to fight over who gets the apartment. Paige owned it before they got together, it's only fair she gets to keep it now. Aoi packs her things and leaves. It's early morning so she drives to a copy shop to scan her design blueprint before forwarding it to the rich guy's address. Then she climbs back into her car and drives two hours to her brother's house.

He opens the door after the first knock and doesn't seem all that surprised when he sees her belongings in boxes. He just picks them up, carries them into his home and then turns around to hug her.

"Hey, sis," Natsume says.

"Hey idiot," Aoi answers.

She falls asleep next to him that night, nestled between him and Mikan and it's the best sleep she has gotten in months. Aoi doesn't end up staying with them long, only two weeks or so. The money she receives when the rich guy tells her he wants to commission her to design his house is enough for her to rent out a small apartment, one filled with no one but her. She quits her job, too, and it's easier than she expected. At night, she still sleeps with her lights turned on and sometimes the emptiness of her apartment is a terrifying thing.

The fear inside her never leaves and the memories don't do either. She still sees her therapist, too, and it helps, even if it sometimes makes her question her own strength. But her life is all of it - the fire that destroyed her home town, her lost eyesight, her time in the Academy with Rei Serio, her brother's love and her mother's death. It's a crazy life, and a good one and more than anything, it is hers.


End file.
